


A Seeker’s Feud with the Brotherhood

by Ihsan997



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Adventure, Assassination, Assassination Attempt(s), Assassination Plot(s), Attempted Murder, Education, Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr, Elsweyr (Elder Scrolls), F/M, Murder, Murder Mystery, Polygamy, Poverty, References to Illness, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihsan997/pseuds/Ihsan997
Summary: In my efforts to raise the rate of critical literacy among the impoverished communities of Elsweyr, I’ve reached many hearts and minds. I’ve made my fair share of enemies, too. Little did I know that, by simply teaching Khajiit laborers and migrant workers to read their pay slips and write complaint letters, I’d make myself the target of a nearly continental, year-long vendetta.Through the beaten paths and trade caravans from Riverhold to Senchal, I followed the trail of clues. I had no idea where we were going, but I had to try.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t own Elder Scrolls.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As of now, this remains as my character’s reflective journal only. Much of what he writes is phrased under the assumption that it may be read by other, like-minded heretics one day, so the narrative takes the form of an unaddressed letter. As of now, though, it shouldn’t be available IC-ly. That may change depending on in-game experiences with other players as well as possible changes to my headcanon.
> 
> There is a slight chance that players affiliated with the Dark Brotherhood might possibly have an inkling of knowledge of these events IC-ly, but by the very nature of this story, my character has no way of knowing that - another source of frustration for him. Please contact me privately if you think your character may be aware of what occurred prior to writing or RP-ing as such.

In spite of my shameful verbosity, this is an address for which I’ve found no satisfactory introduction. That is due, in part, to my poverty in terms of a satisfactory explanation from the beginning to the end. I have neither an opening monologue nor an insightful soliloquy to provide background information as to how this ordeal began. Similarly, I can’t provide a final thought on how the matter ended because, I must admit, I’m not entirely sure it has ended. As much as I’d like to believe that I emerged from the conflict victorious, I am compelled to admit that such a belief results only from subjective wishful thinking. Even today, I find myself searching under the bed of any inn room before sleeping, entering no hallway or enclosed space without first ensuring that I’m accompanied by close confidantes, and sealing window frames and floorboards whenever I spend an extended amount of time indoors. In essence, my whole lifestyle has been altered due to my experiences since arriving in Elsweyr.

Look at my words…I claimed to posses no adequate introduction, and here I am rambling already. Whenever you do read this, then you’re still unlikely to enjoy counting how many lines I can fill with a preamble. That’s not what you want.

If I’ve allowed you to read this, then you want to know the facts.

You want to know what caused me to begin looking over my shoulder when passing through a doorway, right?

Why my wives insist on tasting all of my meals before they let me eat?

When I started sitting in the corner of every tavern?

You want to know what made me a target of the Dark Brotherhood.

Read on, then.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all began with a bathhouse, an assassin, and non-gratuitous nudity.

Proud as I am to say that I participated in the efforts of the locals to exterminate the Euraxian usurpers from the lands of Elsweyr, I must confess that the initial exuberant peace achieved left me with more free time than I’d intended. The activities of my private life allowed me to support myself rather well financially, but after contributing to one of the most glorious examples of people power in our era, the pursuit of mere worldly gain left me aimless for a period. It was during this period that I found myself in Riverhold, the starting point of the revolution, for rather un-revolutionary aims.

Having concluded the mundane matter for which I’d been staying in the town, I found myself with an entire evening and night to myself before my scheduled departure from the landmark town he following morning. As was my habit at the time, I sent my travel companions ahead of me to perform spot checks on my quarters for the evening as well as the surrounding public areas. We always split up to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, leaving me with at least three hours before I’d planned to sleep. Careless as I always had been, I wandered Riverhold’s narrow streets in search of leisure activities until I happened upon the town’s only bathhouse. So foolish was I that, without prior planning or consideration, I entered the establishment without hesitating even when the sleepy-eyed attendant informed me that there were no other patrons at that time of night.

The tranquil characteristics which put me into such a deep state of relaxation were exactly those which made my sequence of choices so dangerous to my person. Tucked away between storehouses and shuttered shops due to the location of the aquifer, too far from the residential area for sound to carry over, and beyond potential targets for robbers and thus the attention of town militia members, the location was perhaps the most ignored in Riverhold even by petty criminals. Because the establishment was empty, I was in no hurry in order to preserve a spot in the shower stalls lest I lose my spot; because the water was so warm, I lost my situational awareness while there; because I reached a level of relaxation I hadn’t known in many years, I made no attempts to consider the perils of spending my late evening in an ignored, unfamiliar part of a poorly policed town.

How’s that for an introduction? I’m sure you must be wondering what exactly happened to change my perspective on personal security.

Upon completion of my shower within the mud-brick walls of the stall, I noticed that the nighttime climate was still rather humid, and my skin began to perspire. Quite absentmindedly, I wrapped a bath towel around my waist and then ruffled through my belongings for anything to cover my neck. Though I’m unsure of the veracity of this claim, I’ve often been told that the temperature on the back of one’s neck regulates the temperature of the entire body. For that reason, the item which I pulled out was a chain mail coif which I typically wear while traveling in the event that I encounter bandits or other ruffians. The metal was cool on my neck - too cool, in fact, and I then pulled out a plain shirt and wore it over my head and neck like a hood. The fabric provided enough cover to reduce the cooling effect of the steel links, and I promptly forgot about the matter.

In between humming tunes I’d heard from the local Khajiiti bard and reviewing the itinerary for my next day of travel, I began to reorganize my belongings to dress and leave. At that time, when I stood at my most ignorant and unaware, I came the closest to death I’d been since the heaviest fighting during the rebellion.

The struggle was typical of what one would expect in such an ambush. My assailant seized me from behind and immediately attacked my hooded head and neck, pulling the hood over my face and slashing with a knife. Despite having worn shoes, my assailant slipped on the floor as much as I did, lost control, and fell as roughly as I did. When I rose at the same time and began to defend myself, the masked man failed to react in time. My assumption is that, when my chain coif protected me from the blade, my assailant failed to notice due to the position of my shirt; he’d expected me to die from the poison on the blade and thus flinched when I removed the towel from my waist and wrapped it around his wrist. Flinching again in reaction to my nakedness, the attacker hesitated just long enough for me to shove him against a towel rack. His prowess was as expected for a professional assassin, however, and he soon gained the upper hand, shoving me back and struggling with all his might to regain control of his knife. During the scuffle, my thumb was dislocated and one foot was fractured, as were three toes on my other foot. Despite his advantage, my assailant made the error of pushing me against the towel rack hard enough for it to shatter, and in my desperation, I reached with my free hand and used a splintered hook from the towel rack as a shiv. Unlike me, my assailant had worn no neck protection and was summarily disabled; before he could counterattack, I casted a spell - inefficiently, sloppily, and poorly aimed - to drain his health. By the time my fractures had reset into place, my assailant had died and left me alone, in that unfamiliar location, with a dead body on my hands.

Before my adrenaline rush had even receded, I barricaded the door and wasted a few minutes pacing back and forth searching for further infiltrators. Once I’d regained my senses, I hid the body in a shower stall, got dressed, and ventured out of the showering area; the drowsy attendant had, bizarrely, slept through the entire altercation in the next room over. In one of the less auspicious moments of my life, I ended the incident by carrying the body outside and concealing it in a hedge until I could locate my companions to help me more properly dispose of it.

The ordeal didn’t end with that, of course, but I thought it would at the time. You know, by the time you’ll be reading this of course, that my belief was rather erroneous.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’ve been attacked by an unknown (and now dead) assailant while traveling. What do you do?

From this point in my tale of woe, the disjointed nature of my narrative will occur to reasons other than my usual long-winded nature. I hope that you don’t take this personally, my friend. To clarify, I’m not withholding certain details from you so much as from anyone else who ever happens upon this note. Some matters, while exerting a measure of influence over events, lack the significance necessary to render them as scaffolding for the greater plot. I’m sure you’ll understand in this context.

Little sleep was had that night, as you could imagine. Upon reconvening at the room I’d rented for our stay, my travel attendants devised a means by which they could transport the body to a refuse pit outside Riverhold and perform a spot inspection of my assailant then and there. They found no identifying marks or tattoos, and the attacker carried no identifying documents or possessions on his person. To the casual observer, he would have appeared to be a typical middle-aged Nord, slightly short in stature and ruddy in complexion but otherwise unremarkable. The sole detail which connected this individual to any intentions more sinister than that of a desperate mugger was the poisoned blade.

My wives, as I’d expected, became visibly agitated, and they proceeded to commandeer our operation to the point of deciding our next plan of action right in front of me but without consulting me. My travel attendants were ordered to patrol the entire quarter of the town around the Banished Regrets Inn all night; when they complained of fatigue, they were simply paid extra and told to drink whatever substance would keep them awake. I was barred from leaving our rented room, even for a moment, and they insisted on sleeping in shifts as if we were sneaking through hostile territory. The end of my business in Riverhold was far less pleasant than my first memories of the town.

At an ungodly hour of the morning, I was the last person among my own entourage to learn of our imminent departure among a small caravan destined for Hakoshae, just as we were. Joining a relatively anonymous group seemed safer than traveling alone, though, so I lodged no complaints when my itinerary was suddenly changed.

The journey from Riverhold to Hakoshae took roughly a week through portions of Elsweyr’s most beautiful scenery. We were unable to truly relax and enjoy the trip, however; our days felt long and monotonous despite the normal adventure expected from such travel, and our nights felt exposed and suffocating despite the fresh air and safety in numbers. By the time we arrived at our destination, we wasted no time setting ourselves up in another rented room, this time with a local family; Hakoshae is bereft of the large traveler’s hostels available in other towns, and the town residents rent furnished rooms and sheds instead. Having noticed no stalkers during the week of travel, my travel companions and I laid down to rest for the night after only our most habitual of precautions. With my assailant’s body disposed of and our trail unfollowed, we assumed our trip to comprise at least a brief reprieve, if not an end to the whole matter.

Little did we know of the lengths to which my pursuers would go!


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pattern begins to form. And by pattern, I mean a second premeditated murder attempt.

The grace period I’d been granted occupied, proportionally speaking, most of my time spent in Hakoshae. As with my time in Riverhold, my purpose for visiting the town of Akaviri refugees was unrelated to my activism. After a week of travel, I achieved my worldly goal in two days of part-time labor, leaving my companions and I a brief respite from the travel which awaited us. As I’d done previously, I intended to leave to Rimmen in order to plan my next course of action, and the trek ahead of us - roughly equal in length to the one we’d just completed - didn’t provide particularly strong motivation for me to embark so soon.

We did take simple precautions, however - precautions so simple that, by now, I wouldn’t dream of taking. Hakoshae is a medium to large sized town by the standards of the region, but it’s still small enough such that outsiders run the risk of unwanted attention; thus, I ordered my attendants to disperse for a period of two more days before reconvening. In the interim, they remained among the small caravans of other travelers and merchants outside the city and occupied their time as hired help is wont to do. At the very start of said interim, however, I realized that the incident in Riverhold wasn’t a fluke.

I’d befriended a member of another small caravan for the sake of networking and sharing the news of Elsweyr. He was a modestly dressed Khajiit merchant who’d been born in Hammerfell and knew less of the local culture than I, and we spent much of an afternoon discussing matters of travel and business ethics across regions at a small tea house in the section of town considered crowded by the standards of the inhabitants. One of my wives was trailing us in disguise, as they prefer and as is our habit during travel. Unfortunately, for my almost-friend, such a habit was no longer viable.

After imbibing our tea, we attempted to reach another section of the town via a shortcut through a neglected public garden the unkempt quality of which implied that the locals never cared for it. I’m sure that either the merchant or myself stated this plan out loud because tragedy struck therein. As we stepped over untrimmed hedges, I noticed a pebble in my shoe and paused to remove it without a word; the merchant continued walking ahead of me, not with a word, but a scream as I saw him fall to the ground. Gasping and convulsing, he passed away swiftly from a fatal stab wound with a blade - again poisoned - to his neck. Thoughtlessly, I seized a billowing roll of fabric from among the branches above us, putting myself in greater danger than I realized when I pulled out the attacker: another Khajiit, this one dressed as a beggar. She landed on her feet crouched to attack yet hesitated, glancing between me and the dead merchant; I realized then that she must have intended to kill me but struck the wrong target when I stopped to inspect my shoe.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s view, my second wife had been close enough to intervene before I could be hurt; however, this also resulted in the attacker’s death before I even had a chance to speak. We were not only cursed with two dead bodies in an unfamiliar town but also unable to interrogate the attacker as had been the case in Riverhold. I suggested that I contact my first wife to help hide the bodies, but my second overruled me, pointing out that one of us would have to remain with the bodies while the other returned to our rented room, leaving me alone once more. I relented, and the two of us cut open a hole in the garden’s fence, leaving Hakoshae entirely to dispose of the bodies in a location where they were most likely to be eaten by wild animals. The decision wasn’t an easy one, and I still feel a measure of guilt for having failed to give the merchant a proper burial, but every other alternative would have resulted in even more publicity for ourselves.

We returned to my first wife in our rented room after scavenging whatever we could from the attacker’s corpse; the valuables of the merchant were clandestinely returned to his camel’s saddlebags. Scour the attacker’s personal affects as we might, we couldn’t find any form of identification which would tie my second assailant to the first. There were no documents, no jewelry, no uniforms - even the knives which had been used in each attack were of different origins. Hiring a local alchemist to test the poison on the latest knife yielded the unhelpful response that ‘it was definitely poison,’ prohibiting us from learning anything from its possible origins. Due to the general law-abiding nature of the inhabitants of Hakoshae, we learned very little from the locals; the other travelers provided few other useful answers too, though the single helpful piece of information proved to be significant.

As we learned, the nearest settlement in which one could obtain poisons - potent strains which had short shelf lives - was in the dreadful shantytown known as the Stitches. Within hours of gaining that knowledge, we had once again rounded up our travel attendants and embarked northward to the settlement - and again, I wasn’t consulted so much as politely yet insistently instructed. Although we left alone and with minimal preparation, the decision proved to be most advantageous, as you’ll come to know.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trail of clues becomes complicated and costly as the path of the two would-be assassins are retroactively traced.

Our road from Hakoshae to the Stitches was a difficult one. Without the protection of numbers provided by a proper caravan, my travel companions and I were compelled to maintain an unenviable sleep schedule to keep watch during the nights. Little was said due to our vigilance, and though none of us ever felt we were being watched, a sense of travel fatigue had settled in a week later when we finally reached our destination.

The Stitches is one of the most colorful cities I’ve seen away from major waterways. Possessing diversity and flair more commonly associated with pirate coves, but without the true economic might of high traffic volume, the vertical town gives the impression of chaos and lawlessness to an absurd degree. Every time I set foot on one of those poorly crafted rope bridges, I expected to meet my end in the canyons below, though my participation in the detour there proved to be far less interesting. Upon locating an inn with an embarrassing name but a reputation for security, my wives sent out the travel attendants to camp on their own while keeping me sealed in the rented room without my consent. Although they did so for my own safety, I experienced a measure of cabin fever and requested time outside on multiple occasions. As I should have known, my efforts were for naught in the end, and I spent our stay in the town confined to that one room while they spent shifts either staying in the room to keep watch or directing the efforts of our hired help outside. All of my knowledge of and experience with the Stitches was gained through what they told me when changing shifts, allowing me to record only the vaguest of descriptions.

Our presence was noticed by the locals immediately due to the low volume of traffic through the area, compromising our intelligence gathering efforts. Much of the gold we’d allotted for our trip was spent on various bribes for both information and secrecy, and we essentially outsourced our search. This was necessary because, as the innkeeper assured us, our recent arrival in the settlement ensured that none of the locals would take us seriously. That innkeeper had himself suffered critical financial losses and thus had a monetary incentive not only to provide accurate information but also a continuous flow of accurate information; all he told us proved to be prophetic. In his desperation to earn the inn back from a pair of immigrant twins in a bad loan deal, the innkeeper functioned as a middleman between my travel attendants and his local informants. After a chain of payments which seemed needlessly complicated as well as four whole days of waiting, the innkeeper reported to a travel attendant who reported to my wives who reported to me, as I’d only left the rented room to use the lavatory without dawdling or so much as passing in front of a window.

The details we discovered after four days of waiting on informants of informants is as follows. Poison brewers are more common in the Stitches than actual legitimate alchemists, and their customers are as varied as the chemical substances being sold. Stemming from that, to describe my assailants to the brewers in the hopes that they would remember individual faces would not only be fruitless but also risk exposing us. However, all brewers reported a general pattern of behavior among their customers: their poisons were bought in sealed containers to avoid exposure to the air, and those containers had standard volumes beyond what the typical murder would require in order to gouge their customers on prices. In order to buy smaller quantities, the brewers would actually increase the charges due to the process of extracting smaller amounts of poison and sealing them in smaller, non-standard vials. This practice was, apparently, relatively rare since most of their customers didn’t mind receiving extra poison at a cheaper price and, as we’d all known previously, most poisons will lose their potency within days once exposed to the open air - which is exactly what happened when the poison brewers of the Stitches performed the aforementioned extraction. And as it just so happened, those brewers could recall instances of customers making such requests whereas they couldn’t recall individual names and faces.

Although the lead was small, our local informants pursued it anyway upon dealing further damage to my coin purse. Eighteen days had passed between the first attack in Riverhold and our arrival in the Stitches, with another four days spent therein adding up to twenty-two days since the entire ordeal began. The rate of potency loss in the given poisons wasn’t exact, according to the brewers, but they all provided estimates which average between eight and nine days - just enough time for a customer to arrive in either Riverhold or Hakoshae with a day or two to spare. Of the brewers we spoke to, all but two kept records of sale written in unique codes which not even their assistants could read; the remaining two memorized all of their records, though our informants came to believe that one of the two had been afflicted with unreliable memory and disregarded his testimony.

Now, this next detail is brief, but quite significant in impact on this whole ordeal. In the process of gaining access to these records, I had to spend half of my allotted budget for travel. Even though our funds would last for a period of time, I can’t emphasize enough how costly our visit to the Stitches was in a purely monetary sense.

That being said, the stay was profitable in the strategic sense. Bribery achieves much in a place of such ill repute, and every poison brewer in the Stitches - without exception - revealed their customers to our informants in exchange for cash payments. I know you may be asking about our own status given that piece of information; rest assured that I’ll get to that in a moment. However, I wish to state up front that the records proved to be exactly what we needed: by decoding all sales for a period of nine days before each attack on my person, our informants uncovered two sales of individual vials of poison to a single buyer named “Shanker” who had a reputation as a reliable smuggler between the Stitches and Rimmen.

There were many questions remaining, such as how such a person smuggled poison into Riverhold and Hakoshae when they were so far from his route. Knowing from the locals that Shanker had at least one home base in Rimmen, that my funds were rapidly dwindling, and that I knew the outskirts of Rimmen extremely well, I devised a plan which my wives accepted as sufficiently safe for me and which my attendants accepted as sufficiently restful for them. Because I knew the area so well, my portal magic - limited as my skill with it may be - could help us reach the city with a simple fifteen-minute ritual. Once in the city, my attendants could blend in, I could recoup the financial losses I’d incurred so far, and I could reach one of the few individuals whom both you and I are willing to trust with such matters.

I had to find Mizzik Thunderboots.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proceed to a polite lecture from Mizzik Thunderboots on the art of not making oneself a target.

Let me be up front in my confession: I’m not the most skilled sorcerer on Nirn. As obvious as such a statement may be, I feel it a necessary one when I explain our movement from the Stitches to Rimmen. Although I’m familiar with the environs of the city, my calculations were off for the ritual spell which I wove into the sands of the Stitches with a series of polished stones. We ended up within sight of Rimmen’s spires but at a distance which required over two hours of walking. This delay struck a blow to the morale of my travel attendants, requiring a brief speech to rouse their spirits; such an act required an investment of more time, but I found it preferable to my wives’ suggestion of intimidating my hirelings into silent obedience. By the time we’d reached Rimmen, passed through the security checks, and located a suitably quiet and secluded inn, a decent portion of the day had passed. As an act of mercy, I dismissed my travel attendants to tend to their affairs for a period of three days after which we’d reconvene for a planning meeting, though my real intention was to allow them a necessary leave of absence after all the traveling.

Once we’d settled in, I located the temporary office of Mizzik Thunderboots only to find that he’d left on an assignment until the next morning. I spent that night working under the table at the artisan’s district to recoup my considerable expenditures in the Stitches and waited for Thunderboots the next morning. My decision proved most appropriate, as he’d been planning a rotational assignment at another office of his in another town, and I had to pay an increased rate to persuade him to adjust his operational schedule. In the end, he charged slightly more than what I’d earned the previous night, but the money was well spent.

Thunderboots began the consultation by asking me to retell the entire chain of events over the previous month. Interestingly enough, he never took any written notes but proved able to recall every last detail at any moment throughout his entire investigation. He also revealed, in the beginning, that he knew of the individual called “Shanker” but couldn’t reveal any personal details of another mortal being without sufficient justification. Although I already knew Thunderboots to be an honorable servant of his community, and I respected the power of his memory for reasons related to my religious confession, his ethical stance earned him even more respect from me, as well as my patience with his caution. By the time we’d finished discussing every minute detail of my movements and activities for the past month, including numerous details which I hadn’t considered significant previously, the time for lunch had arrived. I think it bears repeating, as a matter of simple admiration rather than foreshadowing, that none of these details were written down.

After lunch, Thunderboots chastised me - and justifiably so - for my lack of care in living arrangements. This chastisement focused on my habits of room rentals, travel patterns, and identity delineation.

I’d been under the impression that my room rental precautions were sufficient, but he brought multiple mistakes to my attention. In my efforts to spread critical literacy among Northern Elsweyr’s impoverished and remote communities, I frequented both Riverhold and Rimmen, as well as Hakoshae on occasion, as layovers and transit points. None of my visits to these towns were at intervals of any regularity as I made my way, hamlet by hamlet and nomad camp by nomad camp, raising awareness of basic mortal rights and teaching the locals how to teach themselves. However, every time I *did* stay in the aforementioned towns, I stayed in the same exact rooms; not just the same inns, but even the very same rooms. My reasoning was that I knew those rooms, inns, and neighborhoods, and I preferred to rent in locations where I was familiar with the surrounding neighborhood. Thunderboots explained that, even if my schedule was irregular, staying in the same exact room every time would be noticed, whether by the inn proprietors or other guests.

I’d been under the impression that traveling to small Khajiit communities in an erratic pattern around my three central travel hubs would prevent my trail from being followed. Rather than following the well-known local roads and planning efficient routes, my travels in the region have been purposefully inefficient and counterintuitive in order to prevent prediction of my movements. Thunderboots explained that, regardless of my confounding routes of travel, I still selected them so that they’d be situated around a single specific travel hub each time, making the roads I walked on unpredictable but the town I’d eventually return to highly predictable. My efforts were for naught because I always restricted myself to a single hub to which I’d return; it was only a matter of time.

I’d been under the impression that using two separate identities to separate my activism from my business would be enough to prevent the two from being connected by unwanted observers. The efforts of a literacy activist in a region known for authoritarian governments is not only thankless but penniless; one doesn’t challenge the authority of the Dominion, the Empire, and the Euraxians and expect to be financially compensated. At the same time, my efforts bear a considerable expense of which the foray into the Stitches was merely one example. My crafting skills have found a strong demand in this part of the continent, and I felt that a separate identity for urban areas would allow me to keep those two aspects of my life separate. Thunderboots explained that, no matter how much time I spent in between appearances, concerned parties would eventually notice that my two identities never appeared in any locations simultaneously; as one disappeared, the other appeared. Most of the world would never know the difference; a person who made me their obsession, however, would eventually find out, especially given that I’d spent over a year in my efforts.

Having thoroughly excoriated my security precautions, Thunderboots then delivered the good news that he’d accepted my case without reservations, his previous ethical concerns allayed by my honesty about the details of my situation. We ended our initial consultation - half his working day by then - with plans to meet again the following morning. He wouldn’t make any guarantees at the time other than to say he hoped to provide a preliminary assessment of the case as well as a justified report on Shanker’s activities, location, and likely scenarios of involvement.

As you can probably guess, the true story wasn’t as simple as my leaving his office and spending a quiet evening in wait for the next morning.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A target can never let their guard down.

Although Rimmen is quite a large city, one with numerous services for travelers, I intentionally chose to stay in the Sugar Bowl, one of the more well-known establishments. My reasoning was that, given the public visibility of the location, a potential assassin would have to be particularly audacious to make another attempt on my life. At the time, I had no idea how wrong I was - or that I was about to begin one of the most difficult nights of my life.

The Sugar Bowl is known for a talented, well-organized culinary staff who specialize in the dishes favored by Elsweyr natives. One does not simply rent a room without trying the food, and after much cajoling and persuasion, my wives permitted that we’d seat ourselves in the dining area for our first normal meal since Hakoshae. I use the term ‘permit’ because of their overly-protective nature after the previous attempts on my life; they’re both as strong of will as I, and considerably less subtle in expressing themselves, so I had to spend an inordinate amount of time that afternoon pleading for a normal evening after they’d initially planned to force me into our room for my own safety. Once we all sat down and ordered food and drink, the tension decreased enough such that we could almost enjoy the sublime atmosphere of the dining area. There’s a certain flavor to the Khajiit character that, no matter how much time an outsider spends in Elsweyr, always feels exotic. The meal was the first authentic one we’d ordered in far too long, and for a few moments, I almost forgot that I’d been targeted by hired killers. The mistake, in the end, was all mine.

We finished our meal and retired to our rented quarters early, as I still retained the common sense to avoid excessive exposure to the public in general. Shortly after we returned to our room, our ordeal began.

You know me well enough, if you’re reading this, to know my covetous protection of my privacy. Just as I eschew judgment of the choices of others, so I loathe their judgment of me, and my choices. I have no desire to reveal the details of my personal life beyond the necessities of telling this tale, and thus, I offer no explanation for my household arrangement. All I can reveal, in this case, is the acute pain that my first and I suffered throughout the night while caring for my second. Being creatures of change as they both are, there was never any true fear of loss from the ordeal: we knew, as you know, that the worst case scenario was a temporary absence prior to reformation in the inky waters of Apocrypha. That being said, the torture of maliciously induced illness sufficed to test the fortitude of even creatures as resolute as they.

My second wife complained of discomfort, assuming that the food had disagreed with her and excusing herself to the lavatory in that wing of the inn. I thought nothing of it, initially, but my first wife expressed concern over the fact that neither she nor I experienced such discomfort despite having eaten at the same table. We monitored the situation of my second much in the way we’d monitor allergies or a headache, all of us under the impression that we could wait out the discomfort while we commiserated over the status of our investigation. We’d only expected the same level of stress as the rest of the previous month, plus an upset stomach.

As the night progressed, my second’s symptoms became progressively worse. Much in the way of a flu patient, her individual signs of illness waxed and waned as time passed. Her temperature rose and fell, her joints ached on and off, her nausea came and went. For every symptom, there surely existed treatments as well as apothecaries in the neighborhood who could provide them; for every plan of action, however, there were reservations about the possible consequences of leaving the room. In the end, we were held prisoner in our inn room by the affliction one of our own had suffered.

That my second had been poisoned became clear as soon as she vomited into the chamber pot while my first and I didn’t. We were under no illusions as to what had occurred - hence our fear of leaving the room. Were either my first or myself to exit the inn, we’d all become easier targets for whoever had attempted to poison us. We spent the next four hours without sleep, doing our best to reduce the agony of my second as she entered what appeared to be her death throes from dehydration and disease. The furthest either of us strayed from the door was a brief trip I made to the lavatory on the same floor to rinse out damp cloths and re-soak them in warm water; otherwise, we remained confined to that room until my second passed out from exhaustion and finally laid still. Because my travel attendants weren’t scheduled to reconvene for another two days, we weren’t able to send for help until Mizarr, the innkeeper, woke us for breakfast in the morning, at which point my first and I had spent a mere three hours sleeping in shifts.

Rest assured that this is a sanitized version of what occurred: I do not wish to dwell on, nor to I find it psychologically healthy for a reader to explore, the minute details of another being’s agony. I can merely summarize the night by stating that, no matter how much I wish my true enemies to suffer, I would not wish such a thing upon a person’s loved ones, having gained firsthand experience. That sort of offense escalates conflict not merely do a different degree but to a different kind - as I then knew had occurred in my own case. My approach with Thunderboots, once Mizarr had alerted him, shifted accordingly.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Retaliation isn’t always sweet revenge...sometimes it’s just stressful survival.

In the morning, Thunderboots received communication from the Sugar Bowl’s innkeeper and arrived before he even went to his rented Rimmen office. He deserves credit for many things, but on that particular morning, I was impressed by his discretion. Even when Mizarr requested permission to enter my rented room to see if he could help us in any way, Thunderboots knew the right answer to allay the innkeeper’s fears without issuing a blanket denial that a problem had occurred on the premises. In prompt fashion, Thunderboots listened to our story and devised a plan to find an antidote without attracting attention to ourselves.

At Thunderboots’ insistence, he left to the nearest apothecary himself, unaccompanied. My first wife and I were in better position to describe my second wife’s symptoms, but Thunderboots noted that a poison-wielding assassin would likely observe nearby. We also suggested that such an assassin could also monitor what patrons bought from such chemists, but Thunderboots noted, once again, that the assassin would risk exposing themselves were they to follow people inside the establishments. That risk likely meant that only the streets would be observed, and so he left on his own after our initial exchange. On his way back to the inn, he’d stopped at a local homeless shelter to deliver provisions from the apothecary as both charity and a ruse in case his activity had been noticed.

As our hired investigator expressed the situation, there were two orders of business for us: the poisoning of our food at the inn and his investigation into Shanker. We reviewed our situation in that order.

Thunderboots began by asking many strange, seemingly irrelevant questions about our meal on the previous night. I trusted that his line of questioning made little sense to me due to the specifics of his profession, and I answered to the best of my ability; he only needed four minutes and some seconds to deduce what had happened. The Sugar Bowl had no alleyway door nor any fire escape leading out of the kitchen; this was surely a violation of city safety regulations, but it did bode well for narrowing down possibilities in the poison puzzle: nobody could have infiltrated the inn’s kitchen to poison the food, meaning that none of Mizarr’s staff could have been involved since I’d retrieved our meal from the kitchen counter myself. In the shuffle of moving around the inn, the poison must have been dropped into our meal as I maneuvered around other patrons back to our table toward the crowded center of the dining area - hence my previous remark that the mistake in this case was all mine. The only interval in which the food could have been poisoned was when it was in my hands between the counter and our table.

Thunderboots then asked many questions about our personal tastes, our eating habits, and our opinions of Elsweyr cuisine. I couldn’t fathom why such details would be relevant until he asked me to act out my physical motions when I’d been at the kitchen counter. I then realized what he was trying to bring my attention to: I’d made a great show of inhaling the steam from a bowl of beef stew, implying to anyone who’d been observing that it was my specific dish. I began to ask him who would be observing such minute details, but I stopped myself when I realized his aim: I’ve been stalked for over a month now, probably much longer, by a group of people tracking my movements very closely. Whoever had been stalking us had assumed the soup was mine and, when I left the counter and before I reached our table, sprinkled dissolving flakes which murder a victim via brief yet severe symptoms which mimic that of dysentery. Little did our stalker realize that the soup belonged to my second wife, and I’d pretended to want it to tease her and help her loosen up. My flirtation, in the end, almost led to a slow, painful process of discorporation and reformation.

Thunderboots then explained, after expressing his condolences, that we could recover from this setback. The apothecary had advised a treatment regimen of not less than thirty hours; my staff of travel attendants wouldn’t reconvene for another two days; and, as his inquiries had revealed, Shanker would return to Rimmen from one of his scheduled smuggling runs in a day-and-a-half. Not only would my second wife have recovered by then, but we also would manage to meet with the man face-to-face prior to assigning new duties to my travel staff.

Due to the level of trust between us, I involved Thunderboots in the planning of our next steps - to an extent. As he’d mentioned one day earlier, he agreed to reveal Shanker’s location to us on moral grounds due to the wrongdoing which had been committed against me; his ethical insistence on that point increased once he’d understood the suffering of my second wife from both myself and the apothecary. His condition for revealing Shanker’s location was that no lives would be taken unless there was absolutely no recourse - and that decision was to be mitigated by his presence for the inevitable meeting, albeit under a disguise similar to that which I myself wore when out in public. After much persuasion - twenty-three minutes, by Thunderboots’ estimation - I’d convinced my wives that his conditions were necessary for us to alleviate the escalating troubles and informed him that his conditions would be honored.

There’s no need for me to rehash the following thirty-plus hours, my friend. My first wife and I cared for my second per the apothecary’s orders, rarely leaving our rented room and creating whatever diversions we could to take her mind off of the slow recovery. For his part, Thunderboots took on a separate case during the interim, avoiding all contact with the entire neighborhood around the Sugar Bowl, while Mizarr finally hired a private security to watch over his establishment after having been advised to do so by multiple community members for a few years.

A measure of anxiety built up within our single rented room during that time, and the emotion proved to be justified when the time came a day-and-a-half later.


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A perceived enemy turns out to be a tragic pawn.

The professional smuggler known as Shanker proved to be an outstanding individual so long as we restrict that adjective to its literal meaning. As I came to know, he broke numerous stereotypes about those working in his profession, he maintained a positive image among his peers, and he’d earned a clean record in terms of amicable relations with his customers and providers. His entire reputation spoke of a consummate professional who avoided conflict and discord at all costs - a working reputation which seemed entirely too good to be true.

In the hours leading up to the inevitable confrontation, this overly rosy picture which had been painted by Thunderboots’ reports gave me pause. For a person who made a living by providing illegal murderous substances to the highest bidder, a life devoid of conflict either indicated a region full of gentleman and lady criminals, or a cabal of trustworthy, discrete enforcers who could provide protection. For that reason, I devised the following plan which I shared with Thunderboots in the moments leading up to our meeting with the person in question: my wives would remain in the vicinity of Shanker’s living quarters, watching for interlopers, while Thunderboots and I would approach the man on our own; I was to be the only one to speak out loud.

Deep within Rimmen’s middle-class quarter, in the plainest and least interesting section of an otherwise fascinatingly colorful city, we sought out a smooth and underrated door in an unmarked street empty of the groups of children ubiquitous in the rest of Rimmen. My wives had both dispersed several streets before and ascended to the rooftops, leaving Thunderboots and I to knock on the conspicuously inconspicuous wooden door leading into one of many small apartments in the crowded inner-city block. We had to try a few times until we roused the man from his slumber, and even then, we were met with the drowsy evasiveness expected from any normal person who’d been visited by strangers.

Convincing Shanker that I was a potential customer was a simple matter; persuading him to speak face-to-face required more nuance. He expressed a strong preference to discuss transactions in the local refuge for outlaws, a location where both Thunderboots and I risked exposure, and I had to burnish an initial bribe for him to merely open his door to us. We entered Shanker’s shockingly unimpressive apartment wherein he challenged my preconceptions of our ordeal without even realizing he’d done so.

The diminutive wood elven smuggler, small even by the standards of his own people, broke my preconceptions about such an individual in several practical ways. His small apartment was as poorly decorated as his neighborhood, his wardrobe was pitifully small, and he possessed no outward signs of wealth. Most strikingly, his apartment was devoid of weaponry: Shanker lacked any apparent means to defend himself, relying entirely on the same city law enforcement as law-abiding citizens. The man bore no scars from battle, no armor to protect himself, and no rough manners expected from a member of the criminal underworld. In fact, Shanker began our discussion by offering us packaged food for which he made a great show of treating for potential poisoning as a sign of trust. This humble man was not the crude death merchant I’d been expecting to meet.

If you remember our own discussions with each other, my friend, then you’ll likely remember my aversion toward dishonesty in all its formers. Given my circumstance, however, I deigned complete disclosure to be a risk to my purpose there, and thus I told Shanker a concoction of truth and lies crafted much in the way he brewed his toxic potions. By asking intentionally uninformed, naïve questions - the type which even an educator such as myself would judge as ‘stupid questions’ - I led our poorly-dressed host to reveal much of his movements to us due to the misconceptions I compelled him to correct. None of his poisons were of his own making, as he explained, but rather poisons which he bought on the open market in the Stitches; he was a trafficker and little more. Orders were delivered to the aforementioned den of thieves, the Rimmen Outlaws’ Refuge, and the locals passed on orders to Shanker to fetch for them from the Stitches; he didn’t usually deal with his customers directly as he was doing with myself.

Though I was disappointed by his answer, Thunderboots nudged me with his elbow as we sat and ate, and I continued to pry to the point that Shanker became uncomfortable with the conversation. When I continued asking about his mode of operations rather than his prices, his movements became more nervous and repetitive, and his eyes broke away from mine more frequently. He’d realized that I hadn’t been up front about my intentions there, but he lacked the fortitude to outright eject us from his apartment. This clearly wasn’t the ruffian I’d expected, for had he been, he would have either threatened us, or at least possessed the confidence to send us away from him.

I found no need to deal with such an unfortunate soul roughly, and so I gave him more of the truth. After offering him a pittance of more gold - for my own finances were already running tightly - I claimed to represent a client who was seeking revenge after attempted murder in Riverhold and Hakoshae. Thunderboots coughed in an attempt to dissuade me, and Shanker began to visibly perspire, but I found little recourse due to the mild-mannered criminal’s evasiveness. Like a skooma addict, however, Shanker continued to provide more information in exchange for more promises of money, revealing that he’d received a similar home visit from a customer, just like mine, following an on-site sale at the Stitches earlier than that; both cases were out of the ordinary for him, and he shared his fear that he was the one being followed.

Finding the diminutive man to be increasingly paranoid, I paused for a moment and thought of a solution which would help both of us; one which would allay his fears enough to share more information with me, and also remove the possibility of him selling me out the way I was pressuring him to sell out his mysterious customers. Thunderboots listened intently as I manipulated the nervous wreck of a man, commenting on his apparent poverty, the secrecy and constant paranoia to which he’d been sworn, and the hectic work schedule which he’d described to me per his constant movement between the Stitches and Rimmen. I then very briefly cast a spell to open a scrying portal - only a shimmering glimpse of another physical location - showing him the renowned port of Stros M’Kai. The impoverished smuggler had rarely seen such magic up close, most of his life having been spent among outlaws and street gangs, and he marveled at the demonstration of a faraway location full of anonymous smugglers and pirates in need of crew members. I expressed my pity for his situation and, while maintaining my spellcast to animate more images of Stros M’Kai, commented on the opportunities for an experienced smuggler with startup money and no connections or complications.

Was my behavior ethical? Absolutely not. Was it the most non-violent solution to succeeding in my interrogation? Most likely.

Shanker’s tired eyes looked wistfully at the destination waving and shimmering in the magically conjured image; he didn’t bother looking at his unimpressive living conditions when I commented, most likely because he knew them far better than I. Without any segue or verbal transition, the desperate wood elf began sharing the desired information, mixed in with multiple false starts and disconnected, unexplained comments, much of which I wouldn’t have understood had Thunderboots not been there to sort out the logical flow of details later.

When Shanker had finished retelling everything he could recall almost fifteen minutes later, he was trembling with anticipation. Clearly anxious about the major life change he’d accepted by breaking confidentiality of a customer, he was shaken by the knowledge of what he’d done. Having learned everything I needed from him, I didn’t waste time in enacting our mutually beneficial transaction. Breaching confidentiality was a death sentence for him were the local outlaws to ever find out…and one way or another, they’d most likely find out. A nervous person like Shanker would most assuredly breach my confidentiality as well, and I only exposed myself to more risk by leaving him there. I made good on my promise in the end; after a lengthy ritual, I opened a one-way portal right there in Shanker’s apartment, expending much of my magicka reserves to hold it open as he gathered up his money and meager belongings and, without so much as a goodbye or last look, stepped through my portal to a secluded grove overlooking Stros M’Kai. He didn’t even glance back at his former apartment once he’d walked through, skipping town and the entire continent once I’d presented the opportunity for him to start a new life far away from the pressure and danger of running illegal goods between remote settlements. That apartment, I then realized, was less his living quarters and more his prison.

What were those details he’d shared with me, you may ask? Yes, they were the entire reason I’d approached the man, and yes, I’ve entirely skipped over them here. I’ve already rambled for long enough in this specific entry, however, and the information we’d acquired is better explained on a fresh page recording the events of a fresh day - the day when I came face-to-face with Shanker’s customer and my would-be executioner.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The inevitable reveal foreshadowed all along.

The next twenty-four hours were busy, restless, eventful, and very insightful. So much occurred, so little rest was had, and even now, I find myself at a loss as to how I should begin. I’ve since elected to write these details down in a chronological progression, though this progression bears no special significance.

As soon as the portal to Stros M’Kai dissipated and Shanker fled mainland Tamriel, Thunderboots expressed his misgivings over my choice of action. In addition to being a private investigator, the man is also an ethicist and a truly good-hearted mortal being, and the manipulation of an impoverished smuggler didn’t sit well with him. Rather than engaging in a moral debate, I accepted Thunderboots’ chastisement as I had previously and focused on the mish-mash of disconnected facts we’d been given.

Per Shanker’s retelling, he’d been trafficking illegally brewed poison in airtight, long-life containers between the Stitches and Rimmen for over a decade. Much of his life was spent on the road because, whenever he was at home in Rimmen, the local thugs who ran the outlaws’ refuge insisted that he minimize his contact with the locals - one of many constraints on his life which made him feel like a prisoner. The time Shanker spent on the road, with caravans, and in other settlements were the only moments when he was free. For over ten years, he’d carried on that way due to various debts he owed, and his life had featured little to no variation.

Hence, when he’d been approached by a customer directly outside the Stitches asking for short-life poison in small amounts, he felt the arrangement was unusual. His alcoholism and gambling habits prevented him from rejecting the request, though, even when provisioning customers outside of Rimmen was likely to get him killed. The customers at the Stitches were the first lead which Shanker provided: one was a Dagi-raht woman, and the other a relatively short ruddy-skinned Nord who fit the description of my attacker in Riverhold. Their exchange was brief: they requested a small amount of short-life poison and he requested enough money to repay a gambling partner from the previous night. This meeting had occurred one month before I met Shanker, whereas I’d been attacked at Riverhold twenty-six days beforehand; to reach Riverhold from the Stitches in only four days was truly impressive but still theoretically possible.

By the time Shanker had returned to Rimmen over a week later, he found another pair of customers waiting at his apartment for him: the same Dagi-raht who’d approached him in the Stitches, and a Cathay woman who matched the description of my attacker in Hakoshae. Once again exploiting Shanker’s desperation and misery, they purchased a measure of his product on the spot, and once again in a small measure. And also once again, I found myself impressed by their capacity for quick travel: there were eleven days between the two attacks on me, leaving them with an itinerary which would be feasible if they granted their poor horses little rest. All of these details were explained in a much more verbose and much less direct manner, and deciphering the chain of events was more complicated than my summary here may imply.

After Shanker had escaped the region, Thunderboots insisted that we leave with the key to Shanker’s apartment and reconvene with his secretary and my wives at his office. We then began the process of revisiting all which had transpired and all which would likely transpire. After a long session of deliberation which dragged into the early evening, Thunderboots drew the following conclusions:

• My efforts in spreading literacy to the impoverished communities of Elsweyr had upset a person possessing enough wealth to stalk me, plan my assassination, and hire multiple professional killers to do so.  
• I’d been observed long enough for my usual travel routes between Riverhold, Hakoshae, and Rimmen to be recognized.  
• The failure of both armed assassins had been noticed quickly enough for my travel routes to be followed again.  
• The failure of the assassin who’d tried to poison me at the Sugar Bowl had most likely been noticed since my room at the establishment was still rented and, in the technical sense, occupied.  
• Whoever followed us from Hakoshae to Rimmen was likely still in Rimmen.  
• Shanker’s absence wouldn’t have been noticed yet, but might be noticed by his customers and associates very soon.  
• The contractor managing the armed assassins was most likely the Dagi-raht woman who’d approached Shanker twice.

Based on the reasonable assumption that I was still both being monitored and in danger, Thunderboots devised a plan which was eventually accepted by all parties involved (you can probably guess that the initial opposition didn’t arise from myself). My travel staff were scheduled to convene the next morning, but Thunderboots was to receive them at the specified stables in my stead, bearing their wages for another three days and a handwritten, signed letter instructing them to accept his message and avoid contact with each other during that time. The investigator himself was also to deliver payment for our room rental at the Sugar Bowl for that duration, though the room was to remain locked and the key in Thunderboots’ possession. Last, but certainly not least, my wives and I moved in to Shanker’s old apartment with enough provisions for three days, provided by Thunderboots’ secretary prior to our habitation. We were not to leave under any circumstances other than the three-day period expiring or, as we hoped and as came to pass, we established contact - for as the failure of the third attempt on my life was known, and as my continued presence in Rimmen was known, the customers would soon come calling to the truant smuggler’s residence.

With my funds running low and my activities essentially halted by the assassination plot against me, we retired to Shanker’s apartment late that night and slept little, lamenting for the disruption to our lives and our mission to Elsweyr’s people. The entire next day came and went, and we utilized our isolation to rehearse every possible scenario we could imagine for the inevitable meeting, whether it be with the outlaws or the assassins, whether it be amicable or hostile. Such rehearsals came in handy, for on the second day, when rough knocking came to the apartment door, the similarly rough voices demanding Shanker’s presence, I felt the distinct pinpricks which often preceded an awaited event.

My wives concealed themselves on either side of the door under Shanker’s blankets and towels, while I had the unenviable disguise of the small man’s restrictively small clothes. Coughing and fumbling at the door to feign illness and mask my voice, I mumbled a few words about catching a cold when asked about my absence from the refuge. Increasingly irritated, the voices of three people demanded to see Shanker face-to-face, and as soon as I unlocked the door, they entered of their own accord - one small figure and two large ones carrying weighted clubs. The two armed men were dead in seconds, of course, and I’ve grown so used to such overreactions that I no longer bother to express regret when my wives react in such a way.

The last figure, the smaller one in the middle, nearly escaped before I grabbed her by the arm and threw her to Shanker’s straw mattress. Lo and behold, the lynx-like fur of a Dagi-raht poked out from beneath the cloak of the would-be executioner. And, lo and behold, out from the folds of her cloak’s interior pocket fell one of the last items I’d want to see…there in front of us was an opened letter bearing the a handprint of black paint representing a seal which could belong to only one unmistakeable organization.


End file.
